Did it for the Vine
by FrankandJoe3
Summary: Batman is introduced to the concept of Vine, courtesy of the six young heroes at Mt. Justice.


**Yes, this fic may be a bit of a crack!shot or whatever, but... there's a story behind it. I get to my dad's house and I'm supposed to be babysitting my step brother. Can't find him anywhere. Then, I'm outside looking and I hear a, "Bitches be like..." so I look up and he's on the roof. Of our garage. Completely detached from the house with no building or ladder near to use to get up there. And when I ask about it, he said it was for a vine video. I don't know if Vine is still a big thing, but I'm not sure that I really care. So, enjoy. **

**Disclaimer: Anything you recognize, I do not own.**

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Having raised Dick for four years now, Batman had gotten the hang of handling kids and the childish behavior that comes with them- especially when it came to the team of younger heroes he was in charge of. He would look past their immature jokes and the pranks that would sometimes leave someone missing a patch of hair as long as they gave each practice their all. That was the deal, and everyone respected it.

They're just being kids, the Dark Knight would tell himself as a teen came to practice with their eyebrow burnt off or with a face stained a suspicious purple color. This is a normal thing, he would repeat on a mantra as his ward and his friend would giggle into their palms at everything to leave his lips as they turned it into something sexual. Parents somewhere out there have to deal with this too, he assures himself as he has to tell the six of them that they aren't in trouble for somehow getting the toaster lodged into the ceiling.

Even with restraint as refined as his own, everyone has to draw the line somewhere; or, in his case, draw up a set of rules.

_#1: No bodies in the refrigerator. _

It couldn't have been any earlier than eight when the man had given up on attempting to gain contact with one of the younger heroes. He had been trying over the communicator for too long, and concern had him taking the ZETA tube up to Mt. Justice to investigate. There wasn't any real worry over their well-beings; more over the state of the mountain.

When the ebony arrived, he was amazed to find that he couldn't find head or hair of any of the teens, no matter how hard he looked. Provided they weren't playing hide and seek in the vents again, he found it safe to assume they had gone out for breakfast.

The thought of food had his own stomach giving a curious growl, so he made his way over to the refrigerator in the kitchen. With all of the time Miss Martian spent here testing her recipes, there had to be something he could grab. When he pulled the door open though, any thought of food left his mind as he found his ward scrunched up in the place where the shelves should've been.

Blue eyes met his darker set and they held each other's gaze for a long time.

"S'for a Vine," Dick said quietly after the longest moment.

Bruce stared a bit harder, as though it would help him understand. When it didn't, he gave a little nod and shut the refrigerator door again.

_#2: No hairspray. No exceptions. _

After finding the team and having them spar off for about fifteen minutes, he let them scurry off to kill time and hung back to tell Black Canary about finding Dick in the refrigerator that morning. Although she had laughed, he couldn't quite bring himself to. She explained the concept of Vine, easing the confusion in the slightest.

"It's what kids do," she promised him, giving his shoulder a little pat.

"They're not your regular kids, in case you haven't noticed," Batman huffed, but he didn't argue any further.

He stood around a few minutes longer, talking over some other practices they could schedule and the elections coming up in the fall. After a while, the man excused himself to go check on the team. No sooner had he entered the homier part of Mt. Justice did he smell the smoke.

Internal instincts had him running as fast as his feet would go toward the smell and the disgruntled cries, stopping him right in his tracks as he found the source. The couch in the living room area was on fire, Artemis' ponytail standing near-erect above her head as she, Wally and Conner took to beating out the fire. Kaldur and Megan cowered back in the corner away from the flames. Dick walked up seconds later with a fire extinguisher in his arms, putting out what was left.

Batman just stared.

When the team noticed his presence, they all seemed to lose a shade. As they fought for the right words, all eyes went back to Robin. He glared at all of them equally, but approached his mentor with the fire extinguisher still in hand despite.

"We were trying to get Artemis' hair to stick straight up with a few bottles of hairspray and somehow, the couch caught on fire," he explained stiffly, rubbing his neck with a foamy palm.

The ebony pressed his lips together, eying the stain on the couch.

"What was the point of trying to get her hair to stick straight up?" he was almost afraid to ask.

Dick was busy rubbing his hand off on his jeans, disgusted that the foam had touched him.

"A Vine," Wally admitted, dropping his charred jacket over a portion of the burnt section.

Holding back any other comment, Batman turned and left.

_#3: The ceiling is for the lights, not people. _

Feeling a bit stressed, Batman had taken himself down into civvie wear and had gone back home to Alfred. They had a nice lunch together, nothing big, and the ebony recounted the days events so far to the butler. The older man had a field day with it, chuckling happily into his tea mug with a grin almost too big for his face, but Bruce couldn't quite copy it.

"Calm down, Bruce. You're more of an old bag than I am," Alfred teased, earning a little smile, "They're kids. I was hitting mailboxes and burning boxes in my backyard at their age."

"Don't know how you found time, what with taking care of your stegosaurus farm," Bruce tried not to smile.

That earned another laugh. They chatted calmly over the rest of lunch until the younger of the two felt his phone go off. Curious, he unlocked it and frowned to see that Dinah had sent him a video message. When Alfred asked him what troubled him, Bruce turned the phone and played the video so they both could see it.

It started with Megan and Conner standing there, acting like they usually did around each other. The camera turned to Wally.

"When she asks you to come meet her parents."

The camera panned back to show Conner jumping the forty feet up to an open ceiling grate and crawling from sight.

Alfred hid a laugh behind his tea mug, choking on what he had been drinking. Bruce set the phone down and hid his eyes in his palms with a little groan.

_#4: People are not jungle gyms. (Even if they are clones of Superman).(Yes, I'm serious)._

After some encouraging on Alfred's part, Bruce suited up again and returned to Mt. Justice to see if the teens had eaten. If not, it had been suggested that he invite them all over, but he was thinking more of picking up a pizza. Stepping out of the ZETA transport, he was almost afraid to see what they were all up to.

Coming into the living room, he found Wally, Artemis, Kaldur and Megan all on the coffee table in front of the TV, seeing that the couch was kind of ash at the moment. Wally offered a little wave, but that was the biggest reaction he got out of them all.

"You guys have lunch?" he initiated, waiting until whatever they were watching seemed to take a halt.

There was a little nod among them, each a little more delayed than the other. They murmured about Megan and 'something with cheese', returning to their movie. Bruce tried tuning in, but he didn't want to be laughing as Batman. It was bad on the image.

Just as he was about to ask where Dick was, he heard a little holler and looked up to see his sidekick descending fast from the open ceiling tile. His heart didn't have time to stop. Before the final Flying Grayson sailed six feet under, Conner stepped in the way of his path and offered out his arm like a perch for a bird. All Dick had to do was twist his shoulders before his legs caught the Kryptonian's arm and flipped over it, slowing his trajectory enough so it didn't hurt when he dropped off the arm and landed back on his feet.

"Alright," the ebony dusted himself off, thanking Conner with a little grin, "It's survivable. Who's got the cam-?"

He paused when he noticed Bruce standing back behind what was left of the couch, paling in the slightest.

"We were-," he began to fumble for an excuse, but there wasn't a good enough one out there that Bruce had the patience left for.

"Vines. I know," he sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose as he walked off.

_#5: The Bat Suit is off limits to anyone without a "bat" in their name. _

Before Batman could bring himself to go home without his ward, he ran into Green Arrow as he came through the ZETA tube, and the other hero wouldn't hear of him leaving. He had just finished an operation up in Star City and he just _had _to tell somebody about what happened. Of course that left Bruce as the unfortunate victim. He protested only once before letting himself be led away, staring at the arm Ollie had thrown around him distastefully.

The story actually wasn't that bad- pretty funny by Green Arrow's standards, and drew a few laughs from the Dark Knight. That brought on a few face palm worthy jokes about how he wasn't so dark after all, but he pushed through. When it was over and Ollie spotted another victim to tell, the ebony managed to slip away, returning to the ZETA tube. As he was just about to step through, he stopped, near positive he had heard his own voice coming from somewhere farther off. He paused, craning his neck to try and find the source.

It was too low in tone to be a clip of him on the news as Bruce Wayne, and he doubted any of them besides Dick were interested in politics yet. For that matter, he wasn't sure they would be interested in watching the news. Even he had a hard time choking it down, and he only managed to get in a few hours when he had absolutely nothing else to do at Wayne Tech, and every moment was drowned to the teeth in content that made him look like the White Knight.

His only other idea was a recording, but it sounded too clear to be anything but in person. For a moment, he considered someone having infiltrated the cave, but he was fairly confident of their security system. Curiosity taking the best of him, he embraced his stealth and crept along after the sound of his own voice.

The words were muddled by the gravelly tone, and he genuinely wondered if that's what everyone else heard. Now wasn't the time to get self-conscious. It was the same phrase repeated each time, painstakingly held in the same gruff tone, but he could only make out the word 'girls' from a voice that eventually separated itself from the one that sounded like his.

He tracked it to the hallway that split off into the rooms arranged for the team when they needed to stay overnight. Only three were used on a regular basis, but all of them were fully stocked, and from the darkness in the underneath, it was safe to assume his voice double wasn't in one of the regularly used rooms. As he got closer, the dread in his stomach stirred up at the thought that this was for another one of those Vines.

The door four from the end held his answer and he approached it with a little press of his lips, knowing it was now or never. Taking a breath with his hand on the knob, he threw open the door.

Inside, standing in front of the team minus a certain Martian girl was an exact replica of his own stature, costume recreated to a T- wearing a hot pink bikini.

"Girls be l-," Wally started, voice dying off in his throat as he noticed the figure in the doorway.

The other Batman noticed Wally's expression and turned, only to lock eyes with the original, their eye holes widening in horror. Dick lowered his phone and traded several shades of the color in his face for a thick coating of shame. Batman didn't give him time to offer an excuse.

"I don't think pink is really my color," he breathed in a sigh.

He rubbed his neck, looking his double over with a little shake of his head, giving up on trying to understand it. There wasn't any point; he knew what it was for.

"I'm going home," he told Robin, barely earning his gaze. "You ready or do you want to stay a bit longer?"

Dick looked down at his phone and set it on the table, busying himself with the edge of its case for the longest time.

"I think I'd like to stay a little longer... wrap up. Sorry about this," he added the last bit in the same breath Bruce had used a moment ago.

Batman shook his head and held up a hand to stop him. "No, no, I understand. It was 'for a Vine'. Just call me when you're done."

Just before he got to the door, he stopped and looked back at the other Batman with a great deal of stoicism.

"Miss Martian?" the other Batman looked up at him and confirmed his suspicions. "Try red. It's bold enough to illuminate whatever point you're making, and if you take off the belt, it'll match."

The pink immediately darkened and the belt faded from sight.

"Thank you, sir," the bikini clad figure said in his own voice.

Batman nodded and made quick work of leaving.

_#6: No hacking into other hero's control panels._

When Bruce returned home, still holding the same tired expression he had started after seeing himself in the bikini, Alfred couldn't grin much wider. He wanted to know what it was that he had missed, and Bruce wasn't going to be locking himself away in his room like he always did- not until he told.

The ebony followed after the butler and sat down at the table, retelling what he could, bringing happy shades to the old man's face.

"What I'd give..." Alfred sighed with a delighted grin. "I bet you looked wonderful, Master Wayne."

"Alfred," the man warned.

The butler wasn't hearing it. "You've got all this youth left. I'm going to make sure the portion spent with me isn't wasted on moping and sulking. Go on and have a laugh every once in a while. You'll appreciate it when you're my age."

Bruce cracked a smile and had Alfred make him another thing of tea, insisting that it was for the taste and that Alfred didn't have the grounds to stand on to make any other assumption. Alfred insisted that Bruce wouldn't be able to stand at all if he went on talking like that. The younger of the two managed a laugh.

"I don't think I'll make it to your age, Alfred," he carded a hand back through his hair, feeling a little better.

He accepted the tea with gratitude and set to downing it. The other had just rejoined him at the table when his hand-held communicator went off. Bruce set his mug down and picked up the communicator, allowing the transmission to come through. Before a word was said, he knew it was Red Tornado. No human with access to the channel could make glitching sounds that accurate.

"Batman," the android's voice dropped low on the second syllable.

"What's wrong?" he was quick to respond.

There was a high screech and a stuttered low thrum before he got a response.

"The chil_dren_... They want me t-t-t-to _drop the bass_," Red Tornado's voice immediately cut out and a heavy dubstep beat came spilling over the line.

Bruce turned off the communicator and set it aside, laying his face down in his arms without a word. Alfred gave a gleeful cackle, clapping softly to himself.

"That was delightful," he sighed in the silence, picking up Bruce's tea and bringing it over to the sink. When he returned, Bruce was getting to his feet. "Where are you going?"

"I have something to make," the hero said solemnly and retreated upstairs.

_XxXxX_

The plaque showed up on the counter in the kitchen with seven rules stenciled thickly into it, neatly made, without a name to it. No one had seen who had put it there, but everyone knew who had made it without question. It was this knowledge that officiated the final rule on the plaque:

_#7: No Vines._

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**-F.J. III**


End file.
